Wu and Once Is Enough

You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. --Fortune cookie

Hmmm. And the award for Most Unusual and Random Fortune goes to Fortune Cookie Number 114.

At first glance it seems a little absurd, but as I munched on my tofu with yellow bean and greens, its wisdom came into focus. (Yes, I often open my cookie before I eat–that way I am less likely to eat it since I am already eating my dinner.)

You might think that the better you lived your life, the more likely you’d want to do it again–or that the more you screwed things up, the more you’d like to just give the whole thing up.

But I think the fortune cookie may be correct.

If you really do things right, and live your life without regrets, then once would be enough. You would have a sense if satisfaction and well being. You could put a period or question mark, or an exclamation mark–your choice, at the end of your existence on earth and say it was very good, and you did what you set out to do.

It could also be that a life well lived requires such an expenditure of energy and life force that by the end, you are exhausted from having given it your personal best.

The trouble is, I suppose that most of us would wish for do-overs because we will have regrets.